e strangers, we’re total opposites, living proof that blood doesn’t mean a thing, it’s random, something perfectly worthless, said Vega. I just turned thirty-eight years old, Moya, same as you, I am four years older than my brother, and if my mother hadn’t died I would have been able to live my entire life without returning to see my brother Ivo; that said, Moya, we don’t hate each other, we’re simply two planets on distinct orbits, without anything to say, with nothing to share, no similar tastes, the only thing that brought us together is the task of having inherited my mother’s house in Miramonte, nothing more, said Vega. I have nothing in common with a guy who dedicates his life to making keys, a guy who has dedicated his life to making copies of keys, whose only concern is that his business produces more and more copies of keys, Moya, someone whose life revolves around a business called “Millions of Keys.” His friends gave him the inevitable nickname “Key Ring,” his total universe, his most vital worries, fail to exceed the dimensions of a key, said Vega. My brother is a lunatic, Moya, it causes me true sorrow that someone could live a life like that, it causes me profound sadness to think about someone dedicating his life to making the most possible copies of keys, said Vega. My brother is worse than someone possessed, Moya, he’s the typical middle-class businessman trying to accumulate the money he needs to buy more cars, houses, and women than he needs; for my brother, the ideal world would be an immense locksmith operation, and he would be the only owner, an immense locksmith operation where they would only talk about keys, locks, doorknobs, latchkeys. And it’s not going badly for him, Moya, on the contrary, it’s going very well for my brother, every day he sells more keys, every day he opens another branch of “Millions of Keys,” every day he accumulates more money thanks to his key business, my brother is a true success, Moya, he’s found his goldmine, I doubt there exists another country where people have the same obsession for keys and locks, I don’t think there exists another country where people so obsessively lock themselves in, which is why my brother is a success, because people need tons of keys and locks for the walled houses they live in, said Vega. For fifteen days I haven’t had a conversation that’s been worth it, Moya, for fifteen days these two have talked to me only about keys, locks, and doorknobs, and about the papers I should sign to make the sale of my mother’s house possible, it’s horrible, Moya, I have absolutely nothing to say to my brother, there isn’t a single minimally decent topic we can address with intelligence, said Vega. The principal intellectual preoccupation of my brother is soccer, Moya, he can talk for hours and hours about teams and players, especially about his favorite team, called the Alliance, for my brother the Alliance is the finest manifestation of humanity, he doesn’t miss a single game, he’d commit the most heinous sin if it meant the Alliance would win all its matches, said Vega. My brother’s fanaticism for the Alliance is so high, after a few days it actually occurred to him to invite me to the stadium, can you imagine, Moya, he invited me to the stadium to support the Alliance in a difficult match against their longtime rivals, that’s how he proposed it to me, as if he didn’t know that I detest huge crowds, that concentrations of humanity produce in me an indescribable affliction. There’s nothing more detestable to me than sports, Moya, nothing seems more boring and stupid than sports, most of all the National Soccer League, I don’t understand how my brother could give a damn about twenty-two undernourished morons running after a ball, only someone like my brother could almost have a heart attack about the stumbling of twenty-two undernourished men running after a ball and making a show of their mental deficiency, only someone like my brother could have passionate ideas about locksmithing and a team of undernourished morons that calls itself the Alliance, said Vega. At first my brother thought he would be able to convince me that we shouldn’t sell my mother’s house, that it was best to rent it instead, according to him the real estate market improves every day, my brother said he had no desire to sell my mother’s house; but I was emphatic from the start, I had no doubt that the best decision was to sell her house, it’s what suits me best, so I never have to return to this country, so I can break all ties with this place, with the past, with my brother and his family, so I don’t have to hear anything more about them, which, to be blunt, is why I was emphatic from the start, I didn’t even let my brother make his case against the sale of the house, I said I only wanted my half, if he could pay me the forty-five thousand dollars right then, he could keep the house, that’s what I told him, Moya, because I saw his intention to blackmail me with idiotic sentimentalities, with ideas natural to a guy whose life is limited to keys and locks, idiotic sentimentalities like saying my mother’s house represents the family heritage, like saying we were raised there and similarly the house is associated with the best moments of our youth, I didn’t let him continue with that nonsense, Moya, I told him that for me the family was coincidental, without any importance, proof of this was that the two of us had been able to pass eighteen years without a single conversation, proof was that if this house hadn’t existed we surely wouldn’t have decided to meet again, that’s what I told him, Moya, and I explained that I wanted to forget everything that has to do with my youth spent in this country, my youth lived in this walled house that now I must sell, there is nothing so abominable as the years I spent here, nothing more repulsive than the first twenty years of my life, said Vega, they were years committed only to idiocies, Moya, horrible years, associated with the Marist Brothers, with anxiety about getting away from here, the uneasiness caused by the inevitability of having to live my life in the middle of this rottenness. I’ll ask Tolín to play the CD of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat Minor one more time, said Vega, I want to hear this concerto one more time before someone shows up with another request, I could listen to this concerto by Tchaikovsky a dozen times in a row without being bored, without being tired, Moya, I love this place because at this hour there are never other patrons who annoy me and Tolín always satisfies my musical tastes. Now I know that my brother will do everything possible to swindle half the money from my mother’s house that belongs to me, now that he’s realized I don’t plan to return to this country, my brother will do everything possible to swindle the money from me, I’m sure, Moya, from miles away you can see his happiness about my decision not to return to the country, his expression reveals that he’s thinking about the best way to maximize the selling price of my mother’s house, he’s thinking about the best way to avoid sending me the money that belongs to me from the sale of my mother’s house, at the very least he’ll delay sending it for six months so it earns interest sitting in his bank, said Vega. But this plan of his runs into one problem, Moya, a single, convincing problem, I’ve already revealed it by alerting the lawyer that if they try to perform any sort of fraud, I won’t return to Montreal, instead I will waste my forty-five thousand dollars by making their lives impossible, they’ll be confronting a Canadian citizen, so they better be careful. You should have seen the face my brother made, Moya, super-offended, as if I’d doubted the Virgin Mary’s purity, said Vega, as if the ability to rob and defraud didn’t precisely characterize the people of this country. My brother Ivo started shouting that I was disgraceful and inconsiderate with neither heart nor soul, I had scum in my head, and because I was like that, I thought everyone in the world was like me; he started shouting in the lawyer’s office this morning that I didn’t deserve anything, that he didn’t understand why my mother decided to include me in her will when I had never worried about what happened to the family in my life. He was shouting at me like that, Moya, said Vega. And since my nerves were already shot after fifteen days in this country, after fifteen days in my brother’s house, fifteen days of signing documents and visiting offices, as though my nerves weren’t already disturbed enough I told him I didn’t care what he thought about me, that if there were really something I didn’t care about it’s his opinion of me, that I’d never worry about the opinion of someone who only has his mind on keys and locks and, worse, intends to strip me of money by selling my mother’s house, which is what I said to him, Moya, and I warned him that he couldn’t defraud me, that he’d have to pay every dollar coming to me from the sale of my mother’s house, said Vega. My brother is truly revolting, Moya, which is why I decided this morning to get away from his house, I decided to move to the Terraza Hotel this very morning, after leaving the lawyer’s office, I went to my brother’s house to recover my things and move to the Terraza Hotel, it’s what I should have done as soon as I came to this country, I don’t know how it could have occurred to me to accept my brother’s offer to stay at his house, with his wife and their two kids, I don’t know how the idea could have crossed my mind that I could stand living a month with people like that, only in a state of extreme perturbation could I accept the proposal to stay in my brother’s house, Moya, taking into account that I’ve lived alone the last eighteen years of my life, taking into account that since I managed to escape this country and my mother’s house I’ve always lived alone, said Vega. Luckily, Clara, my brother’s wife, wasn’t around when I recovered my things, lucky for her, I say, Moya, because thanks to my disturbed nerves I would have told her that I actually had nothing ingratiating to say to her, that the last fifteen days I spent in her house had been the worst fifteen days I could remember in my life, that I’ve never been immersed in an environment as miserable, as stupid, as foreign to my spirit, an environment that only served to keep me in a state of extremely anxiety, said Vega, everything was completely crude, the proper environment of a middle-class family in San Salvador, something I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. My brother’s house is located in Escalon Norte, Moya, a horrible neighborhood beginning with its name, a neighborhood for middle-class arrivistes aspiring to live in the actual neighborhood of Escalon but who don’t have the money to buy a house in actual Escalon, so Escalon Norte was invented for these middle-class arrivistes like my brother, who as soon as they save enough money will buy themselves a house in Escalon, not in Escalon Norte that only has in common with actual Escalon the fact that both neighborhoods are built on the hillside leading up to the volcano, said Vega. It’s horrible how this city has grown, Moya, it’s already eaten up half the volcano, it has already eaten up nearly half the surrounding green area, people here have the tremendous vocation of termites, they consume everything, one only needs to travel a couple of kilometers from San Salvador to realize that sooner or later this whole country will be an immense filthy city surrounded by equally filthy desert, said Vega, the city as it is right now is one of the filthiest and most hostile cities, a city designed for animals, not human beings, a city that converted its historical center into a garbage dump, because since no one was interested in history, they figured the historical center was disposable and therefore they converted it into a garbage dump, really a citywide dump; it’s a revolting city, Moya, intended for dimwits and thieves, whose only preoccupation is to destroy whatever architecture minimally suggests the past in order to construct Esso gas stations and hamburger joints and pizzerias. Tremendous, Moya, said Vega, San Salvador is a grotesque, inane, stupid version of Los Angeles, populated by idiots who only want to seem like the idiots of Los Angeles, it’s a city demonstrating the congenital hypocrisy of its people, the hypocrisy they carry in their most intimate souls is that they want to become gringos, Moya, what they most desire is to become gringos, I swear, but they don’t accept that their most precious desire is to become gringos, because they’re hypocrites, Moya, and they’re capable of killing you if you criticize their revolting Pilsener, their revolting pupusas, their revolting San Salvador, their revolting country, they’re capable of killing you without blinking an eye, and yet they’re absolutely not interested in anything other than destroying their city and their country with infectious enthusiasm. It’s truly revolting, Moya, I assure you, I can’t stand this city, said Vega, it has all the miseries and filth of big cities and none of the virtues, all of the negatives of big cities and not a single basic positive, it’s a city in which you’re screwed if you don’t have a car, because the public transportation is the most incredible thing that can be imagined, the buses are designed to transport livestock, not human beings, people are treated like animals and no one protests, their daily life is spent treated like animals, the only way they’re actually used to traveling by bus is if they’re being treated like animals. It’s incredible, Moya, the bus drivers have been pathological criminals since birth, criminals converted into salaried bus drivers, said Vega, they’re guys who were no doubt torturers and participated in massacres during the civil war and now they’re recycled as bus drivers; the moment you arrive here, to get on a bus is to realize you’ve put your life in the hands of a criminal who drives as fast as possible, who doesn’t respect stop signs or red lights or any sort of traffic signals, a lunatic whose sole goal is to end up with the highest number of lives in his hands in the shortest possible time, said Vega. It’s terrifying, Moya, an experience that’s not recommended for cardiac patients; no one in their right mind could travel every day on a bus in this city, one would have to be permanently and sadistically degraded in spirit to travel every day with these recycled criminals who drive the buses, I swear to you, Moya, I made two trips by bus, soon after I arrived in this city, and it was enough for me to understand that repeating the experience would wreck my nerves in a flash, it was enough for me to understand the level of degradation bus drivers subject the majority of the city to on a daily basis, said Vega. You, Moya, because you have a car, you don’t know what I’m saying, surely you’ve never needed to travel by bus, it never would occur to you to get on a bus, even if your car were broken down it would never occur to you to get on a bus, you would prefer to pay for a taxi or ask some friend to drive you where you want to go. The people in this city are divided into those who have a car and those who travel by bus, this is the most emphatic division, the most radical, said Vega, your income level or the area where you live doesn’t matter much, what is important is if you have a car or travel by bus, it’s truly an infamy, Moya. Luckily, now that I’m at the Terraza Hotel I won’t need to deal with my brother anymore, or his wife, Clara, or their offspring, those boys that don’t do anything except watch television, it’s really incredible, Moya, that pair of kids spending their lives in front of the television, because I want to make it clear that my brother has three televisions in his house, you wouldn’t believe it, three televisions they often turn on at the same time to different channels, a true hell this place is, Moya, I’m thankful to have left that house of lunatics this morning, they only spend their time watching television: the one television that mortifies me most is in the dining room in front of the table, it’s situated in such a way that there’s no way to avoid it at dinner time when you’re trying to eat; the other television is in the kids’ room, and the largest, with a gigantic screen and a VCR, is in the master bedroom. It’s horrible, Moya, hair-raising if you think about it; a family that in its